


I tell myself that I don't need Anyone (But the truth is no one needs Me)

by girlgamer



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Red Hood: Lost Days, The Sandman (Comics), Under the Red Hood
Genre: 'you said you'd update your wip', Angst, BATMAN SLIT HIS KID'S THROAT HONEY WELCOME TO THE REAL WORLD, Claustrophobia, Explosions, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, No editing we die like mne, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Trauma, Unreliable Narrator, Whump, Whumptober 2019, YES I AM STILL UPSET ABOUT THE BATARANG THANKS FOR ASKING, but at least i wrote something, save yourselves, seriously i'm sorry i haven't updated my other fic, the Batarang, this is probably terrible but at least i wrote something, writer's block is my batarang to the throat
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-03
Updated: 2019-10-03
Packaged: 2020-11-22 22:08:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20881451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girlgamer/pseuds/girlgamer
Summary: What if Bruce not looking for Jason in the aftermath of UTRH had.... CONSEQUENCES.





	I tell myself that I don't need Anyone (But the truth is no one needs Me)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Whumptober 1: Shaky Hands is two days late! But hey I wrote something.

Jason wakes up buried under rubble, with the scent of ash and sulphur in his nose and a batarang lodged in his throat. 

The warped sound of sirens in the distance drifting over him and a ringing in his ears that has nothing to do with any external sounds and everything to do with eardrums sore from the aftermath of an explosion. 

He’d like to say that he doesn’t freak out, that he keeps his cool; that his mind sinks into trained razor sharp focus the moment he realises he’s not out of danger, that he assesses his situation with a professional detective-trained eye so that he can decide on an appropriate course of action to deal with this latest obstacle. 

  
He’d like to insist that he doesn’t toss and scream and beg for Bruce in a pale imitation of how he reacted to waking up buried alive when he was fifteen.   
But honestly, only the weight of what’s on top of him saves him from moving too desperately and collapsing the wreckage piled around him into something more lethal. 

He almost hyperventilates but doesn’t.

Because even breathing is difficult right now with debris crushing his chest and a curved blade sunk into his neck, oh he starts to, almost as soon as he gasps himself awake and tastes the smoke in the air and blinks unseeingly into the looming darkness before him. But the stinging pain, (a pain he’s never quite felt before, oh he’s been stabbed and he’s been choked and strangled and he’s had sore throats sure but never like this, never this hideous combined melding of them all) smothers him into silence better than the smoke from his own bomb can.

Maybe later when he’s feeling more poetic and less terrified, he’ll describe it as the bitter taste of defeat, not of smoke, that it’s loss and sheer mind numbing rage or just plain grief that holds him hostage and still, paralysed beneath an already paralysing weight, not terror. 

Maybe later he’ll be less honest about the fact that he whimpers, that he trembles and whispers for Bruce, whispers his name over and over between his lips like the child he used to be's final prayer, before it turns into a strained half shout for Batman in a voice that doesn’t even sound like his and mostly just makes it harder to breathe, trying to let him know where he is, that he’s stuck, so that Bruce can find him even if it’s just to whisk him off to Arkham, because Jason doesn’t want to die. Not here, not like this, not again. 

He feels the hot blood from the wound on his neck pooling and dripping off the jagged edge of the batarang onto his clavicle.  
He can hear a sucking sound and feel bubbling at the back of his mouth coming from it but he ignores it, forcefully pushing the thoughts away in favour of trying to move his arms a little, unfortunately they’re stuck tight and the most he can manage is wiggling them a little, but even that makes the rubble shift and creak in a way that’s distinctly ominous. He can hear the sirens getting closer, the sounds becoming more clear, enough to make out the difference between fire engines and ambulances and police cars like Bruce taught him. Is the fire from the explosion still going? He tries to squint around himself but it’s dark and the walls of the derelict tenement he'd picked for this showdown aren’t sturdy by any means, but it’s not easy to destroy them from this position either. 

He lost track of his last gun right after Bruce charged him and kicked it out of his hands, and his jacket with its load of tools and knives is probably somewhere on the pavements of Gotham’s streets waiting to be picked clean by the city’s entrepreneurs if it hasn’t been already. He should have one last knife from Talia strapped to his left leg and another plainer blade hidden in his boot but getting to either while he’s trapped like this feels like a pipe dream.

He coughs and feels the thick warm slide of blood and mucus curl up the back of his mouth onto his tongue, he panics and wrenches his head to the side viciously so that he won’t choke on the blood as he gurgles but that just jars the batarang against the ground and makes him cough and cough and cough some more. Each cough hurts and stings worse than the last.

“Bruce” He cries out again, not caring that it comes out garbled and raw sounding and that it's too full of obvious fear and that it’s not nearly loud enough and that he won’t be heard over the sirens that are closing in on him and that even if he was loud enough that would be bad because no one’s supposed to know Batman’s real name except family.

He can’t shake the fear that he’s already left, that he’s already on his way to Bludhaven for Dick.

He’d.. He’d made the choice hadn’t he? When Jason <strike>asked</strike>, <strike>begged</strike>, told him, "It’s him or me" Batman had chosen, he’d cut his throat and saved the Joker, no, Batman had cut his throat _ to _ save the joker. Batman had probably calculated the angles and risked the possibility of being wrong, weighed endangering Jason’s life against saving Jason’s murderer and- and- and he’d chosen. Batman chose. Bruce chose. He didn’t choose Jason.

The thought settles deeply into the pit of Jason’s stomach, the knowledge, the answer he’s been wanting this whole time feels heavy and wrong like an anchor in his gut but it’s the truth and it’s what he wanted to know.

And now with that in mind he knows something else too, knows it like he knows how to pull a trigger on a gun, knows it like he knows fire burns hot and ice's cold. Batman’s not coming for him. 

The realisation and the fear and the pain and the cold aching hurt of it lend strength to him in a way nothing else has managed so far: it triggers Lazarus tingles in his chest, he can feel the pit’s burning in his irises and flowing in the hot hot blood that’s dripping out his wound and mixing with the still-cooling and sticky mess on his neck. It overwhelms him to the point where his vision whites out and all he can see is glowing green. And then he’s grabbing a knife under the rubble even as the pile teeters and moans at him and ripping through plaster and mortar and crawling even as bricks and shafts of wood drop down mercilessly on his back and his legs and jagged pieces of glass and metal catch on his clothes, he can deal with the bruises and cuts later, coughing and choking the whole time even as he grits his teeth and moves.

He’s not going to die here with the memory of Joker’s laughter still taking up space in his head, making it so hard to think straight even now. He’s not going to die here and let Bruce erase him as some evil warped phantom of the kid he used to care about, he’s not going to let Bruce keep the fantasy of being a decent hero, a decent parent. Not after this.

He swears it to himself even as he acknowledges somewhat clinically that he’s losing too much blood to the batarang, that it’s getting harder and harder to breathe, that his mouth won’t stop dribbling no matter what he tells it which just makes him feel plain ridiculous and that one of his ribs is definitely broken from his and Batman’s earlier fight.

He forces his arms to move despite their protests and how heavy they feel and how much he wants to stop and rest for a bit just to catch his breath. Because he knows he won’t be able to catch a breath (not really) until he gets his would be father’s blade out of himself and stitches the flesh back together somehow, because he knows he’s already inhaled too much smoke to be healthy and he needs to get somewhere with cleaner air. And he can see the red lights of the GCPD cars flickering over the remains of the tenement now that he’s out from under it. And because he doesn’t want to go to prison tonight almost as much as he doesn’t want to die again.

His arms drag the rest of his body forward bit by bit and he breathes carefully and unevenly around the object taking up space in his gullet.

He pushes himself exhaustedly behind what’s left of a stone gate, wire mesh trailing off its side, drops Talia's knife on the ground beside him. And lifts stubborn shaking fingers to his neck. He doesn’t know how long he was unconscious for after the bomb but it can’t have been that long or the sirens would've started off closer, he doesn’t know how long he was awake under the rubble but it felt like an eternity, he knows however long it was that the batarang has been in his neck for too long.

He tentatively touches the rang only to flinch his hand back away with a choked gasp.

He's not getting that out by himself. Even if he somehow manages to go past the pain and rip it out of himself he'll probably pass out. And even if he doesn't there's no way he'll have the energy necessary to stop the bleeding somehow afterwards. He's... He tries to think of an alternative, any alternative, but his head pulses angrily and he gasps and gasps and gasps.

He can feel himself on the edge of blacking out just from the pain of touching the thing once, and he doesn’t have a communicator to call for help with. He doesn't have anyone to call for help_ from_, except maybe Talia, and she won't make it in time. He’s going to die here, no matter what the Lazarus in his veins has to say on the matter, he can feel it. He can feel the death bearing down on him like heavy arms wrapped around his shoulders. 

He hears Bruce's voice echoing in his ears_ "Here you are Jay-lad your very own batarang. Careful let me show you how to hold it so you don't slice your own hand, it's sharp."_ Jason gasps and coughs up bloody phlegm onto his chin. 

_"Never aim for the throat Jason, it's too risky, too much of a margin for error even for me. Dick had a tendency to aim for the face on instinct when he started unfortunately but the best shots are the arms and legs and hands, here let me show you how, Al can you set up the dummy?" "Calm down chum, there's no pressure, I promise you'll get it eventually. You know when you get really good you can even knock their weapons out of their hands."_

"Shut up, shut up." Jason whispers back brokenly. 

_"Look at that Al, and on the second try no less," "Most impressive sir" _pipes up memory-Alfred,_ "Haha, you've got excellent hand eye co-ordination Jay I'm sure it'll serve you well."_

The memory-Bruce in his head shuts off as his throat makes a wrenching noise that's close to a sob.

He tries to calm down and think this through. Even as his hands shake and shake and shake before his eyes, he hugs himself to try and stop them.

He doesn’t know why he came back but he doubts the universe will be so kind as to give him a third chance after all the trouble he’s caused with his second, even if it was warranted he huffs to himself as he remembers the child sex trafficker who was his first kill.

He considers leaving a message on the wall behind him in his own blood, proclaiming Batman his killer, with a rang in his corpse’s neck for evidence. But he … doesn’t want to hurt Bruce for the sake of hurting him, not really, he wanted to lash out and show him how much pain HE was in, because he thought if Bruce saw that, really saw how much he was hurting, that he’d protect him.

That was why he dragged the Joker out of Arkham anyway, he just, he wanted to make sure Bruce still cared, that he’d make sure that the Joker wouldn’t- couldn’t hurt him again now that he was back. He wanted to prove to himself that Bruce hadn't forgotten him when he'd gotten another Robin, that he'd still care about him now that he was back. He wanted Bruce to prove he mattered enough to him to break a rule.

And he did apparently, just not in the way he thought.

Jason's hands shake as he reaches up to finger the batarang again, it still hurts when he touches it but it's a dull sort of hurt now and it makes him feel dizzy and faint.

He knows that Batman's not coming and that even if he was he wouldn't make it in time now. Knows it the same way he _knew_ that first time he died. Jason doesn't lie to himself and he can see the writing when it's written on the wall, that hasn't changed even if so much else about him has.

But it still hurts, and he knows the truth of it deeper this time so it cuts deeper too, there's still a small helplessly young part of him that wants to believe that Batman always makes it in time to save the day, that Batman can save Robin, but Batman's saving someone else's day right now and Jason's not robin anymore.

It wasn’t fair though.

He doesn't even bother to try not to feel childish as he curls his legs up into a ball and gasps air in and out around the batarang, the blood feels colder now instead of Lazarus hot, it won't be long. He shakes himself mentally and continues the thought.

That he came back to life in a world where everyone he loved had already mourned him and moved on.

It wasn’t fair that Dickie hadn’t even had to do anything except be himself and Bruce was all set to abandon Jason for his eldest the moment an unexpected lightshow across the bay in Bludhaven caught his eyes. Despite the year of constant planning and despite the fact that Jason was falling apart right in front of him Bruce had been prepared to drop him and leave him there in favour of rushing over to Dick, until he'd claimed responsibility for whatever it was that was destroying Bludhaven just to keep his attention for a little longer, pathetically staving off abandonment. 

It wasn’t okay that he had to live in a world where the monster that murdered him was still out there hurting people, that no one had stopped him, that he’d always be out there killing innocents until someone did. That Gotham still lived in fear of that nightmare.

It wasn’t fair that Jason had spent the last two years of his life with the League of Assassins, instead of with his dad, doing homework assignments and worrying about girls and which college to go to. It wasn't fair that he'd had to teach himself how to shave instead of getting Bruce to show him like Dick got to. It wasn't fair that he was only seventeen and he was going to die again and he suddenly felt so old and tired and so young and scared all at once. It wasn’t right that there was a kid he didn’t know living in his house and wearing the costume he died in. A kid Bruce and Dick liked better.

It wasn’t fair that Jason had come back from the dead only to find out his dad didn’t want him anymore.

Jason squeezes his eyes shut against the spots in his vision and the aching feeling in his heart and the numb cold absence of pain at his neck. He can feel wetness leaking down his cheeks under his domino mask.

He can still feel his hands shaking on his arms, gripping his biceps through his body armour so tightly, which is funny, he can't feel the batarang anymore but he can feel his own hands, shaking shaking scared, vibrating almost even though the rest of him is so very still. 

He pretends that they're Bruce's hands not his and that Bruce is scared not him, because Bruce _doesn't_ want him to die.

Jason blinks against the tears. 

Heroes aren’t supposed to kill their kids.


End file.
